Modern technology has accelerated the pace of communication and consequently increased the importance of being aware of the receipt of incoming electronic messages so as to permit a prompt reply. The most common form of electronic messaging in today's office environment is voice mail, facsimile transmissions and e-mail. It is becoming more common to use a single personal computer for receiving all of these forms of incoming messages. In the home office environment, this is typically accomplished by a stand alone personal computer, whereas in a larger office environment, internal networks may be used to relay these types of messages from a central message receiver to the recipient at his or her personal computer connected to the network.
The receipt of voice, fax and e-mail messages is typically handled by different software packages. Many types of voice mail, fax modem and e-mail receiving systems have some form of alerting means to signal the computer user that an incoming message has been received. On the other hand, some such message receiving systems requires a user to check if any messages have been received without any form of automatic notification.
It has been found that the known systems for providing a message status display do not provide a convenient integrated display which shows the status of incoming messages received at a number of different message receiving systems. It is also not known to provide an easy-to-view message status display device which can be positioned by the user for viewing in a convenient location.